Flying Club

If your club is looking for a low-cost trainer, the Cessna 150/152 often comes to mind. But don’t overlook the Piper Tomahawk. When Piper was designing its replacement to the aging Cherokee 140 training fleet in the late 1970s, it surveyed flight instructors and incorporated their input. The result was a reliable trainer that is more spinnable than a 150/152. Nearly 2,500 were made in the five years it was produced. Graham Wilson, chief flight instructor for Windsor Flying Club in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, shares their experience with this T-tail trainer.

AOPA’s You Can Fly serves as the umbrella for many of our activities designed to get people flying and keep them flying. It includes things like support for flying clubs and flight schools, the Rusty Pilots program to get lapsed pilots back in the air, and our Reimagined Aircraft initiative. It includes a small group of AOPA Ambassadors to bring these programs to life on a very grassroots level. In Florida, AOPA Ambassador Jamie Beckett helped a group of pilots launch a new flying club in just a few weeks. Ambassadors like Jamie are all over the country and are one of many resources available to you.

AOPA’s Rusty Pilot courses are designed to reignite the passion of pilots who have let their currency lapse. Several flying clubs have hosted these seminars recently as a way to gain recognition in the aviation community, recruit new members, and to strengthen General Aviation as a whole. And there’s an added benefit for current pilots – the course serves as the ground portion of the biennial flight review, making it a great club activity for your current members as well.

Hawaii is one of the most beautiful places on earth—and it looks even better by air. With 14 public use airports on the eight islands, there are plenty of opportunities for general aviation pilots. Moore Air is a for-profit company that offers aircraft rental, but also has a flying club to help keep rates low for frequent flyers and visitors to the islands. Moore Air owner and president Mark Jones shares how it all works and what it’s like to fly in Hawaii.

There were two finance-related questions that were posed recently on the AOPA Facebook Flying Club page and we thought we’d share them both to help generate a discussion and remind clubs that there are many resources at AOPA, from flying club webinars to staff at the Pilot Information Center that can help answer your questions. Read the April Question of the Month to see what suggestions were made regarding finances.

Flying Club members are more likely to have opportunities to fly different aircraft, and getting the proper transition training can make a big different. ASI has created a new online course, Transitioning to Other Airplanes, to help pilots – whether your stepping up to a more advanced aircraft, stepping down to something lighter and less powerful, moving to an experimental, or transitioning to different avionics it’s important to know what to expect.

Flying to Dauphin Island, a quiet escape 30 miles south of Mobile, Alabama, is an opportunity to ditch traffic, seek serenity, and enjoy outstanding Gulf seafood, according to the experts at Pilot Getaways.